Moneyball movie review

I often meet the claim, “Based on a true story,” with nothing less than trepidation, but with Moneyball, the expectations were raised: baseball, Brad Pitt… that seems pretty hard to screw it up. The film makers sure did try, though.

The movie starts at the end the Oakland Athletics 2001 season. After winning the first two games, my beloved Yankees came back to take the series from them 3 games to 2 (which included the now legendary Derek Jeter flip play in game three) and ended the As season. Because Oakland is always light on payroll, they will not be able to retain their two best position players, first baseman Jason Giambi (who signed an enormous contract with the Yankees) and center fielder Johnny Damon (who signed a hefty contract with the Boston Red Sox). Making up the offense that these departing players contributed is the primary goal during the 2001-2002 off season, and Beane decides to ignore the advice of his scouts and coaches and instead embrace the Billy James philosophy proposed by the Peter Brand character, which essentially evaluates players based almost entirely from their advanced statistics rather than traditional baseball scouting practices of believing what your eyes tell you and traditional stats such as batting average and RBI.

Essentially, the movie makes two arguments:

“You don’t put a team together with a computer, Billy,” says the Grady Fuson character.

“I can’t compete against a hundred and twenty million payroll with thirty eight million dollars,” says the Billy Beane character. So, the logic is, don’t try, but instead, think differently.

As a lifelong baseball fan, I can tell you that both of these arguments are false. You can put a team together with a computer, but that isn’t going to solve all of your problems (because you’re not going to be able to acquire much in the way of pitching using this method – small market teams develop quality pitching via draft picks and their farm system… like the 2002 As did, but I’ll get back to that later) and as any Yankee fan can tell you, you can’t buy a World Series victory with a checkbook, no matter how hard you try (see the Yankees 2004 through 2008 seasons) – New York Mets fans know this better than Yankees fans, and Boston Red Sox fans got a taste of this in 2011 that frankly boggles the mind. Certainly, the Bill James philosophy has plenty of merit, but in my view, the teams with low payroll and a high level of success do it by drafting young talent (making the most of their high draft picks) and developing that talent into impact players at the Major League level. Bill James’ philosophy has more than earned its place in Major League Baseball, but it’s not the answer to everything, just a new tool in the toolbox.

Here’s a few points that ultimately dropped this movie’s score from a 4 to a 3.5.

Editing

I love it when directors and editors let an actor play out a scene on their face – meaning no dialogue, just let the actor do their thing and convey everything you need to know without speaking a single word. That is awesome – but this movie took it too far and used this device too often. How many close ups of Brad Pitt driving around in his truck do we need, and why do they have to last for so long? I half expected them to wedge a car crash into the movie because he’s in the car so damn much.

Subplots

The subplots concerning Billy Beane’s professional baseball career did not interest me. I guess it was there to both flesh out his character and to perhaps show why he was willing to fly in the face of convention and reject the standard baseball scouting system, but I feel that this idea robs Beane’s character of his courage and forward thinking and just turns him into some spiteful prick.

I also couldn’t get excited about what was going on in Billy Beane’s personal life. I’m assuming that the idea is to (again) flesh out his character, but this didn’t do anything for me. Billy’s daughter, Casey Beane, is played by 13-year-old Kerris Dorsey, and she’s brilliant in the role, but nothing ever seemed to be at stake regarding their relationship, so it just felt like it was making the movie longer, particularly when she was singing. I thought the inclusion of the scene where Beane is making them ice cream was more than enough to illustrate that he has a daughter, he loves her and if he loses his job, it would impact their relationship. There’s your tension – that’s all we needed. The rest just seemed like filler – I don’t care that there is tension between Beane and his ex-wife and her new husband… the scene concerning Casey having a cell phone was totally unnecessary.

What Year is it?

Kerris Dorsey’s rendition of Lenka’s “The Show” kinda pulled me out of the movie for a moment – I didn’t know what year that song was released until I looked it up (it’s on Lenka’s debut album of the same name, circa 2008), but I certainly knew that song was not out in 2001/2002. To me, it seemed like a weird choice for a movie that was so ingrained in a specific time period and took the time to have year-appropriate cell phone models as props.

Music

I don’t have a problem with a minimalist soundtrack, but like The Social Network, Moneyball’s droning got on my nerves after a while. However, the movie did make excellent use of silence – it’s rare that you can hear a film projector spinning for what seems like minutes at a time while you’re sitting in a theater. If you’re going to reuse the same music cue over and over again, it had better be a good one – and this one was not.

The Big Three

My biggest proverbial beef with Moneyball is the nearly total absence of their starting rotation’s big three: Tim Hudson, Barry Ztio and Mark Mulder. You saw a guy with ‘Hudson’ on his back during one of the game scenes, but that’s it. Why is this such a glaring omission? First off, not mentioning a team’s starting rotation is like doing a bio pic on a government and not having any scenes with the president. Also, these three guys put up serious numbers – check it:

If you don’t follow baseball, these numbers might not mean anything to you, so let me say this: Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder both had great years in 2002, and Barry Ztio not only had the best year of his career, but he was probably the best pitcher in the league that year, earning him the Cy Young award. So why would it be important to mention these guys? They only had 57 wins between them and 650+ innings pitched, so yeah, doesn’t seem important. Sorry, this might seem like a pretentious complaint, but these guys were the heart of the team and although it didn’t hurt the narrative flow of the movie, such a departure of reality is totally unfair to these guys, to baseball, baseball fans and the movie going public – and sometimes the baseball blogger in me comes out and shouts, “Are you kidding me?!?” when I watch baseball movies.

I believe the reason that these players and their place in 2002 Oakland Athletics history is omitted from this movie is because it doesn’t support the movie’s argument concerning the idea that specific players are undervalued for the wrong reasons… also, it kinda undercuts the idea that Oakland is an underdog when they have three of the best pitchers in the league on their starting staff.

Still, Moneyball is a good flick and worth a look for the baseball and non-baseball/non-sports fan. The cinematography is pretty good and Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill and Phillip Seymour Hoffman are all great in it.

They technically could have mentioned those pitchers – especially Zito – to prove their point, because they, too, were overvalued for the “wrong” reasons. The A’s saw the writing on the wall and eventually let them take big, pointless contracts elsewhere. Due to his propensity for allowing flyballs without being able to miss bats via strikeout, Zito especially drew ire from saberists, and even moreso after receiving a wasteful contract in the mid-90’s after a luck-influenced Cy Young season. There was no way he could continue to post ERA’s in the 2’s when he allowed so many balls to be in play.

I don’t know much about baseball but I know enough to understand what this movie Moneyball was talking about. Like you, I have to disagree with what both those quotes have to say. It is called trial and error. You can try it but it is no guarantee to take affect the way the movie did. I didn’t want to believe my co-workers at DISH when they said it was good movie but even Brad Pitt did a great job. I am glad that I got to get it with my Blockbuster Movie Pass. It never lets me down and I agree as well with you Drew.